


Salt and Tears

by cathalin



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-24
Updated: 2011-11-24
Packaged: 2017-10-26 12:17:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cathalin/pseuds/cathalin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the world disintegrates around him, all Erik can think about is Charles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salt and Tears

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Loobeeinthesky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loobeeinthesky/gifts).



> The amazing artist loobeeinthesky made a painting a while ago that just wouldn't leave my head. I wish I had the time and talent to do it justice, but when it wouldn't leave me alone, I sketched out a tiny ficlet as a possible interpretation of the painting.
> 
> Go look at the art right now: [ART HERE](http://loobeeinthesky.livejournal.com/180336.html#cutid1)
> 
> This is what looby wrote about her incredible painting:
> 
>  _In the comics despite all the differences and battles these two have, they always gravitate toward one another, and I can't begin to count the amount of times they hold one another dying in their arms. I wanted to draw something that was in the middle of a battle, but I'm leaving it to the viewer to decide on what happened during that. Is Charles bleeding because he's hurt? Is it over use of his powers? Did Erik rescue him or is he too late? What is that blurred thing coming toward Erik's face *looks evil*_
> 
>  _It's also based on these lyrics by lifehouse._
> 
>  _“Things don’t stop and the others announced they’re moving on  
>  Salt & tears in the minds in the mouths of a bad decision  
> Too late for another mistake it’s bringing me down  
> With all your faults it isn’t your fault”  
> _  
>  
> 
> The questions Loobee asked stayed with me, as did the power of the image of Erik cradling Charles in his arms. I wondered what had happened, and what was about to happen. I wrote this intending it to be a tiny birthday gift for Loobee, but as with everything else in my life right now, got delayed. It's a ridiculous overly sentimental piece, but she told me to go ahead and post it rather than give it just to her, so that's what I'm doing. <3
> 
> ~ ~ ~

**Salt and Tears**

As the world falls down around them, Erik thinks, _I should have--I wish..._

There’s a stirring in his head, a gentle press of warmth, whisper-light, weak: _I know._

Erik just... Just _can’t_ , the grief and longing rising up to choke him like the gases swirling around them.

He’d given up a few minutes ago, completely spent after battling all night, but he has to try one more time. If he never gets to tell him, what it’s meant, having a friend...

 _Don’t. Save strength,_ he hears, wispy, fragmenting already, like the memory of Charles’ voice rather than the thing itself.

He can’t help but laugh, but it comes out rough, coated in the dust and blood of the battlefield. “You’re a fine one to say that,” he manages, running his hand softly through Charles’ matted hair. Charles is unresponsive, blood still dribbling gently from his nose from his last attempt to blast the minds of the enemy. “A fine one indeed,” he repeats, then gives into the urge that’s been dogging him since Charles lost consciousness, the urge that, truth be told, started long before that. He leans down and brushes his lips on his forehead.

Charles doesn’t stir, not even a slight movement, but Erik catches the edges of a picture: a sleeping princess, a prince kissing her cartoon lips. He looks down sharply at Charles’ face. Bone-white, blood a smear of black. Something’s still there inside, though, if he can joke like that.

Charles makes a small sound. Erik realizes his fingers are digging into the flesh of Charles’ arm, side. He eases his fingers one by one, though it takes all his will to make himself relax his grip.

The wind pitches a notch higher around them and he strains to hold the shield-like bubble around them. It’s been draining him slowly, keeping all the whirling debris off of them, away from Charles. He calculates he has a few scant minutes left before the strain of keeping all the metal on the planet away from them drains him and they’re cut to shreds.

He reaches out and gathers the blanket around Charles more closely in the faint hope it will protect him that much longer. He bows his head over Charles, curling his body over him as best he can. Maybe it would be more merciful -- assuming Charles is even alive at this point -- to let him be taken first, ripped to shreds by the bullet casings and nails and machine parts and minerals from the ground itself, flying free as the Earth itself comes undone. But he knows his own weakness, and he knows he won’t be able to let that happen. He’ll have to be first.

Charles has always been his weakness. Charles and the memory of his mother.

He feels his last strength bleeding out of him like a palpable thing and he sighs. This is it, then, the end of it all. He’s almost at a place of serenity about it. At least Charles wasn’t alone, at the end.

So it’s annoying when his almost-peace is interrupted by his own melodramatic brain.

 _Live!_ he hears, a memory of his mother’s disembodied voice and the sense-memory of a flicker of candles -- or is it Charles’ voice under the ocean? -- _Live._

If it were anyone else whose voices were echoing in his head, he wouldn’t listen, but he opens his eyes one last time. Sure enough, the metallic fragments filling the air are closer, closer, as his shielding ability sputters and fine particles of metal pepper his skin like pinpricks...

Something catches his attention, hovering just on the edge of his perception. There’s a slight change in the pitch of the wind. It makes him look up and what he sees--He doesn’t actually know _what_ he’s seeing. It’s like the absence of space in his mind; a place of absolute nothingness.

 _rift_ : Charles’ thought. At least Erik thinks it’s from Charles. It’s hard to say with certainty, since it’s the merest whisper in the farthest corner of his mind. Still, it warms him inside, twists his throat up so he has to swallow hard.

 _go. friend. goodbye._ and then there’s nothing. A palpable nothing from the place where Charles has been for a very long time. Erik never realized how much of his head has been Charles, or him keeping Charles out or trying to hate Charles or--

The absence of space grows and fills slowly with light. If he strains his eyes against the dark where he is, he can see murky shapes, like shadows against the light.

His hands shake and pull Charles’ body closer. Metal from the soil, the very air, maybe from bodies of all those who died today, joins the pieces of detritus from the battle. It swirls around them, faster and faster. The shards breaking through his faltering barriers are bigger now, sharper, drawing blood on his face and hands, but that’s barely an annoyance at this point.

Something Charles said to him this morning comes into his head, about wormholes and the outpost at the edge of the solar system. Is it possible Charles’ mind could reach that far, reach out across the huge expanse of space-time and wrench a response from the colony there? Could that have been the thing that finally felled him, using up his reserves on a suicide mission like that?

Impossible.

And yet. The man in his arms is the same one who brought a tendril of warmth into Erik’s heart when it had been blasted bare.

The stupid voices natter on in the background, in his head. His mother, Charles, it doesn’t matter: they’re both saying the same thing, forcing him to do just one more thing, when all he wants is oblivion.

“Here,” he tries to say, feeling ridiculous, but it comes out a faint whisper. “Here!” he tries again and suddenly there is light all around him, blinding him.

“Found them,” he thinks he hears, and then, “Let us in, God damn it, we have metal all over us, you’re going to have to let it in,” and he does, he somehow forces his mind to stop repulsing metal, but he won’t do the other thing the voices want. He won’t let go of Charles. “No brain activity; we should leave him, we don’t have enough--”

Metal flies at the voice who said that, even though he can’t see them.

“Stop! We’ll take him. Of course we’ll take him,” a soothing voice says, one he knows, trusts somewhere inside.

He stops the metal reluctantly, but it wouldn’t have mattered, because just that extra effort has his consciousness flickering out, out, and everything goes dark, then silent.

~ ~ ~

 _easy_ he hears.

It’s dark and he--

“Watch out, he’s coming out of it!”

Something’s holding him down. There’s metal in it, though it feels off from normal, like the molecules were put together in a slightly different way from what he’s used to.

“Charles,” he tries to say, but all that happens is he hears a sound, grating and terrible, that he eventually figures out is coming from his own throat.

 _here_ the familiar voice/presence says. _too weak talk. sorry._ Something warm blooms in Erik’s chest, hearing that distinctive presence in his head. So typical of Charles to apologize, as if Erik would resent the intrusion into his mind like they hadn’t just--

Actually, what _had_ just happened? Erik sits up abruptly, or tries to; the metal proves weirdly coherent and unwilling to snap apart.

Hank swims into his blurry vision, as close to a smile on his face as is possible given his form. “It’s okay, you’re just a bit disoriented. But you made it. We did it, brought you and the Professor through a multidimensional space-time wormhole, the same as--”

“For Christ’s sake, Beast, the man just held off the disintegration of Earth itself, give him a bit of time.” An unfamiliar voice, and yet he remembers it -- the wolf man, he realizes.

“Erik,” a softer voice says, deep with feeling, hand seeking his. Raven. “Thank you. You. My brother. Even though I didn’t agree with him, at the end, he’s still the person who--”

“saved me,” Erik finishes for her, squeezing her hand blindly.

Abruptly, he feels himself falling into sleep again. This time, he lets himself go easily.

The next time he wakes it’s dark except for a sliver of golden lamplight under a door. The light looks slightly odd. As do the furnishings. The metal fittings of the door have that same askew feeling he sensed before. He thinks he could work it, bend it to his will, but he needs to get to know it, figure out its composition, its nature.

Something stirs to his right and he manages to turn his head.

Charles. Not a dream, then.

Charles’ eyes open and look right into Erik’s. _my friend,_ he sends, then looks chagrined and attempts to say it out loud instead. Nothing but a croak comes out .

Erik can’t help it, he feels his mouth turn up in something like a smile even as he shakes his head. _you’re alive,_ he sends. His eyes sting. _you saved me. you saved us all._.

Charles’ eyes flutter closed as if even their brief interchange is too much. Erik’s heart constricts and something rises up in his throat; remembered grief and fear.

There’s a clanging sound and the ache in his chest eases. He’s swept with a wave of exhaustion and he feels himself falling back into sleep. He’s right at the edge of it when he realizes he’s somehow moved their beds right up next to each other, the metal in the beds responding just fine to his unconscious will despite its odd molecular structure.

He sleeps again.

~ ~ ~

It’s like that for a while, waking briefly then abruptly sleeping.

Until finally it’s not, and he stays awake and feels unmistakable hunger and thirst and the need for a toilet and--

Charles laughs next to him. And squeezes his hand. They’re... holding hands? Erik stiffens reflexively. Charles squeezes tighter, then starts to release his grip.

It all comes flooding back suddenly, those terrible last days. Erik croaks, “no,” and moves his fingers so they’re interlinked with Charles’. After what they faced before, it seems ridiculous, all the petty issues that kept them from this.

But what of--

“They’re fine, all of them. The human children you rescued, too,” Charles adds, voice carefully modulated. “They were able to engage the drive, get here in hyperspace.”

“I didn’t--” Erik’s voice comes out rusty and he coughs. “I didn’t rescue any human children.”

“Right. That’s why you held off the attackers so the transport could pick them up, then shielded them from the bombs.”

“I didn’t do it for them.” Erik turns away, but he can feel Charles’ gaze on him, warm. “Most of the humans died, anyway.”

“And plenty of mutants also. As we both know.”

Now it’s Erik’s turn to glance at Charles, see the rigid line of his jaw. He wants to -- he doesn’t even know what. He wants Charles not to be sad. He wants him to be happy again, sometimes. Maybe not right away, but...

He shifts over awkwardly onto his side and leans further into Charles’ space. Heart pounding, he slowly eases his arm over Charles’ chest. When there’s no resistance, only the flutter of Charles’ heart under his hand, he pulls gently, drawing Charles to him.

It’s cramped and awkward and ridiculous, two men their ages in medical cots holding each other like this. Pulling each other in, burying their faces in each other’s necks.

After what they’ve seen and done, it doesn’t matter any more, the differences. The only things that matter are the things that bind them together, the things that bind this fragile outpost to life, here at the far reaches of the solar system.

Erik has always been expert at wielding his power to pull things apart. Given this second chance, he’s going to see if he can use it to hold things together. Like he’s holding Charles to him right now, heart tripping madly in his chest as he dares--

 _hardly daring, considering how transparent i’ve been in my feelings_ , Charles laugh-talks in his head.

Dares is still a good word, though. Dares to lean in, a fraction of an inch at a time, savoring it, because oh god this is _Charles_.

Leans in and brushes his lips to his, pulls him closer with his hands, winds their bodies together.

The end of one world. And maybe... Maybe the beginning of a new one.


End file.
